It took Joan Forder decades to conquer the effects of abuse she suffered as a child.

“You end up with a lot of shame and a lot of guilt, thinking it’s all your fault. That shapes your life,” Forder says.

Despite a severely dysfunctional upbringing, Forder successfully raised a child of her own and went on to achieve academic credentials she never thought possible.

Now she wants to shed light on the experiences of other adults like herself, who live under the spectre of childhood trauma.

While maintaining a career at the University of Saskatchewan, Forder has also struck out on a side quest. She recently published her first novel, Don’t. While fictional, the book draws on her personal experiences.

Her hope is that writing about adult survivors of trauma will let others know they aren’t alone.

She dislikes the term “survivor.” Instead, she calls herself a “thrivor,” someone who has overcome the barriers built by trauma.

“Being a survivor meant you are still tied to the abuse. I don’t want to be shaped by what happened in the past. I want to move beyond that,” Forder says.

Joan Forder says she dislikes the term “survivor,” and instead calls herself a “thrivor.”

• • •

Growing up in Ontario, Forder was taught that the outside world is evil.

She says her father, who has dies, was fervently religious, and felt his interpretation of the Bible was the only true reading.

“He kept us very secluded, as much as possible, so it was very scary to be out in the world. I didn’t know who to trust or what to do,” she says.

Forder’s only refuge was learning. She was good at school and passionate about science in particular.

“My father didn’t believe in science. He said scientists were evil,” she says.

She took to hiding science books inside comic books, which she was allowed to read. She also hid learning materials in the woods, along with a tape recorder that allowed her to listen to classical music.

Her home situation came to a head the summer she was 16. She doesn’t want to get into specifics, but says there was sexual abuse in the family. On top of that, she was about to lose her opportunity to go to school.

“My father didn’t believe in education. He insisted when we were 16 that we would leave school,” Forder says.

She ran away from home that summer. For about six months she was homeless, sleeping wherever she could find. She kept going to school, and says she would sometimes sneak into the locker room after hours to sleep and shower.

She found herself work, first at a grocery store and then at a cocktail lounge that didn’t ask how old she was. Eventually she saved up enough to rent a place.

After high school her grades were good enough to get her into several universities, but she couldn’t afford to go. She was faced with a terrible challenge: in order to get a student loan she needed a signature from her parents.

She went back to see her father in hopes of getting him to sign. He refused.

Although her months on the street had been tough, she says she had always seen the possibility of a better future.

“The moment my parents wouldn’t sign, that’s when I lost hope, and that’s the worst thing that can happen to a person,” Forder says.

She describes the next few years of her life as “drifting.” She worked different jobs: building electronics in a factory, waitressing.

She finally reached the age where she could get financial support as a mature student. She studied chemical engineering.

During her time at college she got pregnant. Having a child led her away from engineering, but she says it was the turning point in her life.

“Having that child in my arms was the moment I had a purpose in my life,” she says.

Forder was determined to give her son the childhood she didn’t have. At times it was difficult. One night she was so angry she thought about hitting him. It scared her so much she called a hotline for abused children. She says the person on the other end of the line was confused, as Forder had never actually hit her son, but during the discussion she was convinced to take parenting classes, which she says were invaluable.

“I learned how to deal with anger effectively,” Forder says.

That experience would later lead to other counselling, which helped her start to deal with her traumatic past.

It was only through therapy, and the opportunity to talk through her experiences, that Forder was finally able to pursue the dream she had since childhood. Talking about what happened is a first step that is crucial for adult trauma victims. It’s also often the most difficult.

Joan Forder recently published her first novel, Don’t. While fictional, the book draws on her personal experiences.

• • •

Many adults who went through childhood trauma harbour shame, which makes it difficult to address the issue, according to Saskatoon therapist Jan Nerenberg.

For those from an older generation, events during childhood that would now be considered taboo, such as physical violence by a parent, were not spoken about or considered part of a normal upbringing.

“It was just what was our norm, until you’re out of the situation and you begin to see what the norm really is,” Nerenberg says.

There is also still a general lack of understanding around mental illness, according to Regina therapist Sidney McGillicky.

“The stigma is still quite large,” he said.

Bringing issues of trauma and mental illness into the public eye is an important step in helping people realize their experiences aren’t far outside the norm.

“It’s not because they’re weak,” McGillicky says.

He estimates as many as 95 per cent of people he sees, for a variety of conditions, have some sort of childhood trauma contributing to their troubles.

“What happens with childhood trauma is it will impact the development of the child’s brain,” McGillicky says.

Many people don’t make the connection between anxiety or depression felt as an adult and things that happened years or even decades ago.

“In working through their depression, often some of these things come out,” Berenberg says.

• • •

Even as Forder started to confront her troubles, there was still a blockage regarding her lifelong goal of being a scientist.

As she approached 40, she was having what she calls a mid-life crisis. Her son had grown up and moved out of the house. She still wanted to go to university, but struggled with a sense that doing so would be selfish.

Forder decided to go for it. She enrolled at the University of Western Ontario seeking a dual major in physiology and psychology. She finished the four-year program in three-years and earned a scholarship to study a physiology PhD at the Medical College of Wisconsin, which she completed four years later.

She fell in love with teaching and spent years as an instructor.

In 2012, she moved to Saskatoon and took a job at the U of S College of Medicine. It was once she settled in Saskatchewan that she started pursuing her writing seriously.

She knew she wanted to deal with her experiences with adult trauma, but realized fiction would best serve her purpose.

Her first novel, Don’t, is the first in her planned Thrivor Trilogy. It tells the story of a doctor dealing with a troubled past and using writing to cope. It’s a thriller, dealing with the traumatic subject matter frankly.

Immersing herself in the subject matter is challenging at times. The second book in the trilogy follows a girl living in a repressive religious family, something Forder knows all about.

“Being back in those spaces takes some energy. It’s not something you can write for an hour before going to work in the morning,” she says.

Forder says some readers have had trouble with some of the more graphic content in the first book, but that is part of what she is going for. Even if it triggers negative emotions, putting these negative situations out there could help others who have suffered similar experiences feel less alone.

Those realizations — that others have gone through the same things and that help is out there — are what drives Forder to continue.

“It’s important for people to be talking about this. We have a whole generation of people who have been kept silent,” she says.

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